The Electronic Transformation Agency is hoping to start publicly screening the facial recognition element of the government’s digital identity credentialing app by mid-2020.

Chief digital officer Peter Alexander revealed the time frame in senate estimates on Thursday, but stressed the DTA wanted to get the all-significant biometric function suitable right before introducing it.

“We would like the biometric to be in by mid-calendar year, but we wouldn’t strain that,” he reported.

“This is about having it suitable since the biometric is so significant that we do will need to make absolutely sure that this is thriving.”

The biometric refers to the facial recognition element of the Australian Taxation Office’s myGovID digital identity credentialing app. The ATO is the government’s special identity service provider.

myGovID, which has used the last nine months in public beta, now makes it possible for citizens to produce a digital identity that can then be applied to log into a confined array of on the web authorities services.

It now functions like a digital equal of the one hundred position ID look at by using the Doc Verification Services and Encounter Verification Services to validate identity paperwork like passports, Medicare cards and driver’s licences.

But for citizens to entry extra private services – underneath what the DTA calls identity proofing stage three (IP3) – necessitates that facial verification and liveness detection – or a proof-of-everyday living test – be embedded in the app.

In accordance to the reliable digital identity framework, IP3 provides “high self confidence in the claimed identity and is supposed for services with a threat of severe consequences from fraud”.

Due to the fact September 2018, the DTA and ATO has been screening liveness detection software package from IDEMIA to look at if a man or woman is serious by prompting them to move their head among a collection of factors.

But the pair however have not finalised which identity proofing resolution to combine in myGovID, with the ATO last month approaching the industry for “additional seller to test their resolution versus the ATO’s main usability and protection requirements”.

“No final decision has been created on which vendors and which solutions will be ultimately applied for Liveness detection. All alternatives are currently being kept open up,” an ATO spokesperson advised iTnews.

“This exercise is about making absolutely sure that we have analyzed and optimised the IP3 working experience for our consumers.

“The ATO will proceed to test numerous vendors and solutions in buy to optimise the readily available usability and protection needs.”

On Thursday, Alexander reported that though the facial recognition element has been trialled with test teams of citizens and has been revealed to work, the function has not still been applied publically.

DTA chief Randal Brugeaud described the technique to the “implementation of the biometric attributes to assure the Facial Verification Services operates as expected” as “very considered.

“We are operating by way of a established of complex problems in buy for us to allocate an identity which has a biometric anchor,” he advised estimates on Thursday.

“We want to make absolutely sure that the man or woman that is granted that identity is entitle to it, so we’re guaranteeing that the good quality of the biometric is specifically exactly where it wants to be.”

Brugeaud also revealed that the myGovID app has now been downloaded extra than 492,000 moments, with a whole of 332,421 myGovID digital identities developed to date.

This figure is growing every day, as tax gurus proceed to shift to myGovID to substitute the soon-to-be mothballed legacy AUSkey authentication credential.

myGovID, which is established to move from public beta to stay afterwards this month, grew to become the default possibility for tax gurus to entry the ATO’s new on the web tax agent portal in January.